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LucilleAaronWayne OP t1_j8oj9cg wrote

Reply to comment by kabre in Hi, I'm Lucille Aaron-Wayne, MA - Certified IFS therapist (Internal Family Systems therapy). Ask me anything! by LucilleAaronWayne

Hi u/kabre, great question.

Short answer: Yes it's absolutely possible a well-regulated part (i.e., not extreme) might not fit neatly into one of the manager / firefighter / exile categories.

In fact, one of the ways I like to refer to Exiles is: Vulnerable Parts. Because once the Exile is unburdened, it's no longer an Exile - it gets to be a conscious part of the inner system. So we can't accurately call it an Exile anymore.

But I digress.

IFS is an elegantly simple model of the psyche. It's a very effective tool.

And it would be hubris and quite naive to assume that we can have a model that explains everything in psyche. We humans are way too complex for a single system - especially one so simple - to encapsulate everything.

So I hold IFS lightly, knowing that it explains many things, but not everything. I recommend what you're already doing - noticing how your inner world is.

From my view, it's critical to honor the mystery inside, that we can't pin down everything, and that we have no right to, in fact. Our unconscious has the right to exist, too.

In addition, the way I synthesize IFS with the Jungian approach means that I recognize the anima/animus and the shadow as parts. Those definitely don't fit into the neat categories of IFS.

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kabre t1_j8op5ff wrote

>From my view, it's critical to honor the mystery inside, that we can't
pin down everything, and that we have no right to, in fact. Our
unconscious has the right to exist, too.

I've got a part that gave a big grin and double thumbs up to this bit of what you said, ha!

I like this take, and it tracks a little with my own (admittedly untrained) theory. IFS is a particular tool for a particular job, and it's very good at that job, and at seeing parts who are in distress. I came to IFS with a working knowledge of a good handful of parts already, via creative work, and while some of those parts have slotted tidily into IFS roles there are others who don't. So this makes sense to me, but it's also good to hear it from someone trained in the modality as well.

A bit of a diversion, but, having not looked into Jungian stuff much but being passingly aware of the concept of anima/animus, I'm very curious about how you would look at the idea of the anima/animus when considering someone who identifies as agender or nonbinary.

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LucilleAaronWayne OP t1_j8or0zy wrote

Sure! Some Jungians feel that we all have both an animus and anima.

Another way of viewing it is that the animus/anima is essentially the guide between our ego (the regular you, the person you feel you are, your consciousness) and the unconscious.

We all have that, and one view is whether we call it the animus or anima is somewhat irrelevant.

That said, there are some recognizable characteristics that are traditionally recognized to cluster around the animus and others around the anima. So an agender or nonbinary person might feel their inner guide more resembles the animus or the anima.

The anima and animus are really hard to understand. We can't truly pin them down. Kinda like you and I were just discussing with parts in IFS ...

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